Self-actualization is a balancing act. Though many may not reach the heights of solace within their own skin, that’s no reason not to wish for better for ourselves and for each other by proxy.
We are what we continually do. Not all who wander are lost, but many are only chasing safety. Any port in a storm, so they say. It’s only good that we want the best for those who can’t do for themselves, and a moral panic is an irrational externalized response to a perceived lack of shared internalized values, but the desire for equanimity is ultimately a rational one borne of a desire for peace, within and without.
Short form content is just the newest expression of cultural touchstones, and like all ways of being seen by seeing, being known by knowing, it is a boon to some, and a millstone to others.
All roads lead to Rome, but you can’t get there from here, if the path you seek leads you to moralize on behalf of others when one doesn’t offer a better way. In as many words, I agree that shame is unlikely to bear fruit.
We have to separate the good from the bad, and many aren’t able to thread that needle on their own, so for those folks, abandoning short form content entirely may be the best avenue to reconnecting with themselves and with each other. Intermediation can only get us so far, and can only bring us so close.
I concur that moral panic is an irrational response and that shame is an ineffective tool.
The point of divergence, however, is in the diagnosis. Abandoning the medium is an individualist solution prescribed for a structural deprivation. And paradoxically, it only works for socially disaffected individuals, who don't need the solution.
You can't treat a systemic nutritional deficiency by moralizing the choice to eat junk. The craving for junk is the operative symptom. The craving only exists because the primary diet is devoid of the necessary nutrients.
In the same way, you can't expect the individual to "reconnect with themselves" by merely removing the novum pabulum. The mental escapism they seek exists precisely because their rationalized role in society has already disconnected them. "Any port in a storm" implies that the storm ends, but the storm is the baseline condition of their life. It never ends.
For the masses, ontological escapism is a necessary compensation for a cognitive function that has been rationalized out of existence but still demands exercise. The "equanimity" you speak of is what the media provides, but in a way to pacify the parts of the brain that are no longer required for survival but still monkey-mind around. It's the difference between scratching an itch and waiting until the urge passes. The former inflames while notionally palliating while the latter abandons agency and thus blows out the inflammation. The latter unbinds. The former is binding.
The desire for "a better way" is itself a form of nostalgic escapism. It is a wish for some point between today and the pre-rationalized state where some dimension of individual cognition and attention were necessary.
This "better way" cannot be offered, because it would require dismantling the very structure that provides the economic and biological security that, while being fundamentally precarious, provides the ontological ruts that the masses fall into. It is asking them to take the path of most resistance and favor two birds in the bush.
Reconnection to immanence is a pre-rational state. It is that very state of being that was lost to self-awareness. The masses cannot regress to it by an act of individual will because what they lack is individual will. That lack is total and reinforcing. Certain socially alienated or schizoid individuals can (and do) reach immanence, but the hegemonic end of transcendence will come when humans have exhausted all possibilities of avoiding it, but not before.
The better way only exists for individuals, as there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Those who struggle in this way must find their own resolution.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don’t think we need to solve the problem for folks, just acknowledge that they don’t have to expose themselves to content that they can’t handle.
I don’t agree that a totalizing solution is necessary or even possible, nor do I believe that any particular prescription or prohibition is more likely than the other to work for all times and places for all possible people. Should we stand on ceremony until a perfect solution presents itself? That seems just as unlikely to happen in any given timeline as any other solution applying to all of humanity.
In the meantime, if a solution presents itself, it’s only reasonable to try to implement it, such as avoiding Shorts on YouTube, or even blocking them entirely. Just as we should let folks like things, such as junk food, we should also stock their larders with good food in order to make sure their nutritional needs are being met. Folks who want to make a positive impact on their health are not tilting at windmills, and those who struggle to defeat giants are not blameworthy for not being able to. The struggle is real, but the solution to the struggle may not exist in universal human terms. Perhaps every solution must be tailored to the individual needs of each person, but generalized advice is still a good hedge against the tendency of habits to be subverted by advertisers and ne’er-do-wells.